Unintended termination of a voice call between two call participants has plagued mobile communication networks since their inception. Typical reasons for such unintended termination of a call include sporadic connectivity and limited resources (e.g., battery level) of a mobile device used by at least one of the call participants. For example, a call is dropped when the mobile user device enters an area with poor or no service. Also, a call is dropped when the battery of the mobile user device is low or completely discharged and the device turns off.
While this may be a nuisance to casual users, it can have significant detrimental effects in a corporate voice communication network, particularly for users of so-called “smartphones” who rely heavily on such lines of communication to perform important business functions. As is known, a “smartphone” is a voice-centric communication device (i.e., voice communication and applications are the primary functions), which also provides secondary data-centric functions (e.g., phonebook, calendar and task list).
Thus, due to their multi-functionality, it is no surprise that smartphones have become an important part of a corporate voice communication network. Many corporate users are constantly on the move and use their smartphones as their only PBX (private branch exchange) extension. Unfortunately, a voice call between a corporate smartphone and a corporate PBX desktop extension, or other forms of extensions, can be suddenly lost due to the sporadic connectivity and/or limited resources of the smartphone.
If this occurs, one of the parties then needs to manually redial the other party to continue the call. Since the user of the PBX desktop extension does not know if the conditions that led to the dropped call have been corrected or dissipated, that party may need to try several times to get reconnected with the corporate smartphone user to continue an important conversation. This can be a source of great frustration, and even revenue loss, to both parties.
It is apparent from the foregoing that a need exists for techniques for automatically reconnecting an interrupted voice call session.